EWS #120 The Veil (Outer and Inner)      + Q&A    

July 16, 2022

Sraddhalu (0:01:02):
Okay. Your audio is muted, I think.

Alina (0:01:05):
My name is Alina and I'm hosting Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today, part 120!

Namaste, Sraddhalu.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste and happy to be with all of you.

[Alina] We are happy to continue our series. We have been exploring in the last few weeks secrets of occult science and today we will take, we will resume our live sessions and after almost a month or three weeks, we are back and we will continue taking questions that we receive from our viewers. Today you are welcome to address question on our subject, The Veil - The Outer and the Inner worlds.

So I will start with the first question that we received from Trinetra: “How does one see through the veil? Is the veil a real thing or is it a concept to illustrate the metaphorical barrier that keeps humans engaged with problems of physical and mundane life?”.

Another related question from Trinetra: “Hypothetically, how does one create a device that can see into the subtle physical and vital domains?”.

And another question related with our subject: “What is the veil within us and how to go beyond it?”.

Sraddhalu (0:02:57):
Yes, the entire topic is about the veil and as we will see it can be a very broad topic and it can cover so many aspects. We can speak of a veil which exists in a location in an entire region, we can speak of a veil which is within us in different parts or relating to different layers and then we will come to towards the end, of the most important veil, which is the veil which separates us from the psychic being within. But all these are using the word veil. In fact Sri Aurobindo uses this ‘veil’, and the Mother. They use this word in so many different contexts that the question can be taken very broadly. For example, Sri Aurobindo speaks of material circumstances and events preparing behind the veil to finally manifest in material circumstances. He speaks of the wisdom which is behind the veil of surface knowledge; he speaks of the veil of ego; he speaks of the self behind the veil of mind; and in the yoga unfolding itself, he speaks of the Siddhi preparing behind the veil, eventually to come out; the force which acts from behind the veil; he speaks of the veil of ego, veil of nature which of course both cover the inner, deeper, spiritual or soul, psychic self; he speaks of the soul which behind the veil takes delight in all the experiences of life.

And so the context of this word veil is so large that everything, all these experiences and a very wide range of spiritual or yogic experiences would come under this term. So why is it that we use the word veil? We'll look at the question very broadly and then look at some of these kinds of veils. There are two words in fact Sri Aurobindo uses. He speaks of the veil within, behind which the psychic being is realised, and then he speaks of the lid above the head.

So all of yoga in a sense can be reduced to these two movements: the opening of the veil and for this lid, he says the breaking of the lid. That's very suggestive. Why veil? Why lid? And what difference does it make? So I'll play with this a little bit then we will go into the sense of the veil and the lid. The veil is like a curtain in our human experience. It's like a curtain when somebody puts a veil for example on the face. It covers the face and yet the veil can be transparent or semi-transparent. It's as if you are able to sense what is behind the veil, you are able to see what is behind the veil even if partially or the veil can be more and more covered up like when in a temple, at least in Indian temples you have a veil which covers the deity.

I was fascinated to see this in Egypt in the Coptic Christian tradition they had exactly the same thing. During the prayer, during the ceremony the veil would be parted and afterwards the veil is closed and the deity is allowed to remain covered. Exactly the same in Indian temples. The deity is not exposed all the time. Again very symbolic. You will see the sense of it as we proceed to the veil behind which the psychic being is felt.

So veil can be semi-transparent or entirely opaque. It can progressively become more and more transparent. And at some point it can become so transparent that you have the illusion of seeing or feeling or receiving from what is behind. And yet there is a separation. So, which is typically the case with the experience of the psychic is very strongly felt and yet it retains a veil. It keeps a separation. So the veil allows for a rich variation of the quality of influence that comes through.

In contrast, the lid is like a rigid barrier. You can see nothing behind, nothing beyond, it even prevents you from being able to receive an influence. What is behind is completely blocked. In the yoga process we're referring to the lid above which prevents our mental consciousness from opening to that which is above all the ranges. The lid can begin to thin, it can crack or in one violent blow it can break and shatter. These are all variations of experience. Of course the better way is a gradual thinning. But as it thins, it's not like the veil, it's not as if you are able to see immediately. It is still there or there's a tiny crack and a little bit comes through. But the lid represents something much more rigid and resistant and which once separated or broken does not reform easily. The veil is more fluid, it can become thin, it can become translucent but it keeps a separation; it can even be parted and momentarily when it is parted the influence from behind can be directly contacted and then again the veil closes and the direct contact recedes.

So, the veil has much greater dynamic characteristics than the lid which is somewhat a rigid thing which as it thins or cracks or breaks, there is a kind of a permanence to the change. These are not merely allegorical or metaphorical terms. They are literally the way the thing is experienced and in fact the way it works.

(0:09:55):

So now having understood this utilisation of the phrase of the word, let's look at what makes for a veil practically in terms of consciousness. So I'll briefly step aside from this question to look at the sense of substance and consciousness and then we'll understand this separation of veil more clearly. There's a very important statement Sri Aurobindo makes: “All consciousness is substance”. Now, from the common way of our thinking, consciousness is felt or perceived as something of a blur. It is thought of as something which is non-material and therefore not real or not substantial or not some thing. Consciousness is more like for us, at least in thought, more like an idea or a quality or a state, not a thing in itself.

But the point Shurbindo makes is all consciousness is substance. And substance means you contact, you touch. Substance can touch substance, substance can press against substance, collide, resist and so on. Now how is all consciousness substance? We go a little deeper to this question. What is substance? If you look at this question, I have, let's say, an object in my hand and my finger approaches to touch it. What is happening here at the point of contact is the sensations on my finger are registering a contact on the sensations. In practice, as we understand matter, we will say it is some electrical field of the paper pushing against the electrical field of the atoms of my fingertip and the electrical field under pressure is modified which triggers electrons movement which are then carried by my fine nerves and which is registered as contact.

Think about what it means. Actually it means there is a contact of field with field. A quality of resistance which provokes pressure on my fingertip. Now, let's say we replace the paper and I have an electrical field pulsating. As I approach my finger, the electrical field triggers the electrical field on my fingertip, produces exactly the same sensations and I will say, ‘yes, I am touching the same paper’. Consider one more step. What is this contact? It is consciousness in your finger or through your finger meeting something But what is that thing? Ultimately is consciousness also. So let's say now we put two fingers: this side is consciousness, that side is consciousness meeting consciousness. So in grade of consciousness you could take a finer grade. So my finger is now replaced by air; as I blow on the fingertip, I feel the pressure; it's a finer grade.

If I go to a still finer grade, which is less even, take subatomic particles, a flow of neutrinos, they pass right through my finger. They actually create a ripple, but the ripple is so fine, it's not registered. Or pure Ether waves, which are the very substratum of everything, are touching the fingertip. If those waves vibrate at a frequency much higher than the vibrating fingertip, you feel nothing. If they are so much lower, then also you may not feel much. If they vibrate at the same frequency that the fingertip is sensitive to, you have contact.

So here is your key. All consciousness and consider now just verticality of gradations or for analogy frequencies of consciousness, all is substance. But when two frequencies meet, there is the experience of contact and pressure. When two frequencies are different, they pass as if right through each other without apparent sense of pressure. Or pressure which is so fine that it is practically not felt. Bring back the frequency, match them, you have pressure. Drop the frequency- of loss of pressure. Drop the other frequency to match again and you have pressure. And this gives you your deeper understanding how all consciousness is substantial because everything that exists in the universe is consciousness, meeting consciousness in various grades, degrees, qualities and so on.

(0:14:58):

So once we understand this, next step we apply to this concept of veil. If there is a grade of vibration on one side and a different grade of vibration on another, so different that they don't match, they as if just pass through each other,  then it's as if the two can exist in the same place but have no contact. This is the nature of our spiritual consciousness. It fills the whole universe. Where do I feel it? Only there where my consciousness acquires a quality similar to it and then I can feel the contact. When there is a huge gap in quality, it is as if the contact does not exist.

Can I tune in to come to the Spiritual? And the part in me that tunes the spiritual, experiences the Spiritual, presents around, but the rest of me which is not tuned in, does not experience it. This is often the case in the sadhana that some part of us receives, say let's say in deep concentration or meditation, you feel, oh something wonderful was experienced, felt, received and then as you turn your attention or often when you even open your eyes everything dims and fades out, like a dream. And so you don't want to come out from your concentration; the moment you open your eyes, you know you lose it. But if at that moment you close your eyes again and shift your state back, you find it is all there intact. You open your eyes and you lose it again.

What's happening here? You have a grade of consciousness which is in tune with the spiritual. And as you open your eyes, your focal point or your awareness is now dropping to your normal status. Normal thinking, awake, consciousness of waking. The moment it drops, you have lost the alignment. Now you don't feel the spiritual. Close your eyes for a moment, you may not feel. But if you try to remember what the state was, you again tune in and again you experience the contact. What's the problem now? When you open, is your consciousness changes and there is nothing of you left in the part of contact with the spiritual or the inner, whatever the difference of creed.

But if you could, so to say, extend yourself so that a part of you is in the spiritual and some part of you in the so-called normal state and you experience within you a point of contact between this higher part and the lower part, then you open your eyes and you still are conscious of the spiritual. But by habit, your higher part begins to drop gradually and you lose it. But if you trained yourself now to have a part of you in the higher grade constantly, a part of you in the normal state, you will notice that you have access to that spiritual contact, but it may not be fully felt when you are more superficial. Unless you create another bridge in between, a link, some finer intermediate awareness, quality of awareness, which is awake and which links these two. Then it's as if a part of you is in the higher, a part of you is in this lower and from the higher to the lower you have a continuous flow, a continuity of gradations. That's when you will say, ah now the spiritual and the material states are linked and now there is no more the veil.

(0:18:47):

So what is the veil practically?

Practically was a gap in your consciousness of registration.You may register on the higher grade, you may not register in the lower grade, but in between is a gap, so that you're either in the higher or in the lower and there is nothing in between. So in practice, all sense of separation between two grades or qualities of consciousness is a gap of awareness separating two different states within you. This is the veil.

Now if I map this out in a kind of a slope, let's say, of qualities. Here's your higher consciousness, here's your lower consciousness. From the higher to the lower, if you build a slope, a continuity of gradations, then it's as if a part of you, which is the part of you in the higher, is registering, influences the next grade, next grade, next grade, all the way down to the most material, and you have a smooth continuity of awareness and therefore a flow of consciousness, from the highest to the lowest. But if there are gaps where there is no smooth transfer, those would be veils (in plural).

Now we use the analogy of higher grade of consciousness and the lower grade. But the same thing would exist between any different quality of consciousness. So as you go deeper within, there is a finer inner grade of the, what Sri Aurobindo uses the vocabulary of the inner mind or inner vital or even the inner physical, which is the subtle physical, the true physical, he says, that grade is of a finer, for us, finer grade. In fact, in experience that is often felt more dense, more real, even more vivid. So from your waking state of awareness, which to it feels very thin and shallow and superficial, to that there is a gap.

In states of deep concentration, in meditation, you as if shift your focus to become more and more like it, at which point you have a point of contact. You experience something wonderful, you say, oh it is a different world that lives within me. And then, the most common thing which happens, because by habit, when you open your eyes, you snap out. The biggest mistake people make in any practice of concentration or meditation is to snap out. You see this happening in people, they are in deep sleep, the consciousness returns, they wake up and immediately jump out of the bed. Start my day. The full force of the consciousness is turned outward to express, burst into action.

But in that moment where you woke and turned out with force, you did not pause to look back at the state from which you woke up. And there lies a huge gap. The result is in that shift into waking up, you have lost the full memory of your dream state, inner state, higher state, lower state, whichever state you were in. It could be subconscious, it could be in the subliminal, it could be in a super conscious state also. Everything is lost. It's literally as if an entire universe in which you might have been wandering, you snap out into the surface universe and you lose the link. That's a veil.

But this is also a veil, partly of habit. A veil of the training from childhood to always be superficially outwardly turned; so strongly, that turning in feels like a blurring, it feels like a sleepiness or it feels like a loss of consciousness. And so much of humanity is lost like this. This was not the case until quite recently. In a sense, all this happened with certain forms of modern education combined with the easy accessibility of television and other pre-occupying tendencies that turn us outward.

As we were children, for those of us who are in the older range now, we had much more free time because there was nothing to do in a sense to fill your time. Now the moment you have time, you open your mobile phone and then you're sucked into some world. But we had time, you could look at nature, eventually you would stop looking or you would drift into a kind of a daydream and the kind of an interiorization was common. And for children especially, there is a phase in which you are living half in the inner world, half in the outer world, after birth. During that time you can build this bridge. If you allow that time of introspection and wandering, a kind of a, it's not a fantasy creation but an introspective perception of things. And today if you find a child daydreaming, you will immediately stop him and say, Stop daydreaming, do something. And do something means always turning out. So there has been this very hard turning out which as a result in practice has been, the veil has grown thicker. Because the inward turn has not been encouraged and therefore inward awareness has been lost or is being lost.

(0:24:33):

Sri Aurobindo makes this observation somewhere that in the history of humanity, now that you have to really go back a million, few million years, it's not as our current Western archaeological historical model suggests that we have just woken up from some kind of barbaric condition and over about 2,000 years have grown into civilization; it's not true – we have had far greater civilizations even technologically, even in quality of consciousness where humanity opened to the intuitive in the previous age and we have had many so to say cycles of peaks and what would be called falls. But nowhere in all those cycles now going back a few million years, Sri Aurobindo points out, has there been such a hard materialistic turn in the mass of humanity. There might have been pockets, yes of course, and there might have been pockets of very deep or high opening. But the general decline in the masses of a complete loss of the inner and higher opening to a degree that it is almost as if mass of humanity is materially fixated. It has never been to this degree in the history of humanity. And that's quite a statement when you think about the implications.

But this means also in practice the veil is thicker. Now bridging of the veil, once you understanding the nature of the veil being gaps in consciousness, in us, bridging of the veil means making those gaps more conscious. And as those gaps become more conscious, the veil thins out. So you wake up from sleep, there is the part in which you were awake in the dream, so to say. You call it dreaming, you come to waking on the surface senses, you become aware, oh there's a world out here, immediately the habit of turning starts. In the act of turning there's a gap formed and that's your veil. But if you pause at that moment and hold an in-between poise, as if hold the, prevent the full outward turning, hold a partial inward turning at the moment where you wake up and stay there. It's a blurry half-sleepy consciousness. You might find you tend to slide back if you go into the dream, you may fall asleep again. Or eventually, helplessly you are pulled out and you lose the dream state.

But if you persist, it's like a saddle. Again I have to give you an analogy. You take a ball and try to place it on a saddle. It will tilt this way or that. You either fall asleep or you wake up. You can't stay here. But by a skill of consciousness training, the gap becomes less and you find you are actually, you are able to live between these two worlds and slide between them quite easily. So the gap, which was the veil, the saddle in this case, now becomes more flattened when there is a smooth linearity in consciousness.

At that point something fascinating happens. You are able to shift back into the what was dream state but consciously. You can actually live the dream world conscious that you're dreaming at which point all your senses are turned in, you're not aware of the physical outer world. And the inner dream world, dream state is your so to say virtual reality. You live in it so immersed. And in fact at that point you realise how much more vivid the colours and experiences can be, so much more rich. But you're conscious that you're dreaming or you're in the dream world. And you can actually wander around. You can will yourself to see things, change things, change forms and then comes you discover there's another veil.

This dream state is as if formed by a flow of, or like a stream of images or experiences flowing into you. And you choose to as if snap out of that stream or turn off the flow of that stream. And then you find the dream state itself was like a veil, hypnosis or immersion which subsides and then you discover you are outside your physical body in your subtle body. Now at that moment you may simply be floating just above the gross physical body or you may have drifted away or you might actually be projected somewhere else, nearby typically and you find you are in your subtle body, but experiencing the subtle world not in a dream state.

While you are in that state, again it's a skill you will develop, you are looking and just as initially you were on this hill where you could either snap in or snap out but not stay. In this state of just waking from the dreams into the subtle body, you find you can't stay and helplessly, inevitably, the streaming flow begins once again and sucks you into dream. So one of the biggest difficulties in mastering this out-of-body state is to be able to not fall back into dream, because again there's such a compelling habit there, but to hold that poise. Again that means that veil has to be bridged.

(0:30:12):

Once you are able to do this, something fascinating happens. Here you are in waking state, you close your eyes, you drift inward, you enter into the subliminal grades of the dream world, slide into a kind of a dream state or choose to continue further into that inner waking. Now at that point you can of course allow the dream state to continue. There are many layers within you. Just as in a physical body, the heart is beating and in a very superficial part of the brain there can still be this emergence of images, associations and if you monitor the brain you will see brain activity which are not dream or rather they are dream in the most physical layer, but you are in the dream state of it in the subtle body in other worlds but now you, and that part may continue while you go further deeper. In this state, you actually wander in those worlds.

This would be called, Sri Aurobindo uses the term, Swapna Samadhi. Swapna is dream, Samadhi is immersion, but it is not immersion in dream, but it is immersion in the dream world, in which normally you would have been sucked into dream, but you are in a kind of a waking state and everything there is experienced in quality of that consciousness and those worlds and which has a tremendously powerful symbolic character. But these are not dreams of the superficial mix of subconscious impressions. They are literal realities. You do things there and those things have effects in the world, in the cosmos, in the physical world including.

Mother describes this in a very interesting way. She says often she is working on situations. And so she goes into this state where all the situations and I am going to use my own vocabulary, all the situations as if and as influences of threads are linked together or she links them, aligns them, arranges them; she uses the phrase like numbers but not numbers.

This is as if you're putting things in relation and connecting events, people, circumstances, giving them a direction, a shape, a flow and having done that, when she leaves it, it will have its inevitable consequences all the way sometimes to the material plane. If nothing else at least on the psychological plane.

Just as an example, suppose you are working with a team of people in your job, in the waking world. In that dream state, it's as if you become conscious of the quality of consciousness of these people. So now you're in Swapna Samadhi, not in the dream proper which has only limited value, but in an awareness of these things, in their qualities, vital, mental. You sense the tension between them and the tension is represented in that plane as realities, forces, sometimes forms. And you will certain things to change, you will them into alignment and it's a struggle, because if there's a strong repulsion between two forces, interests, people and sometimes their interests which may influence a group of people even. You find a way to align them and symbolically, and it's not a symbol actually- that's our way of seeing, symbolically you are, you create a way that fits and creates a harmony between them. You notice this has a truth in this way, that has a truth this way and if you align them in this way they join and work together. And it takes pressure of will, consciousness and you do that and it stays; when you come back to your waking world the next day, you will see the same people who were in tension fall into place in alignment and somehow the harmony works. So this is the level at which you can act directly on circumstances in a way that is so powerful as to be irresistible.

And the higher you go up the planes of consciousness, the wider the scope and the more fundamental the nature of the change and also the resistance of course to the change. It was on these levels that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother worked primarily for humanity. Not only to push forward evolution, to change the direction of evolution, but to initiate events to guide certain outcomes. As for example, during the Second World War, when Sri Aurobindo actively intervened at some point to change the direction of the war or when they were working to free India.

You will remember that incident where suddenly Mother declares India is free and Sri Aurobindo asks, ‘how did it happen?’ Mother says, ‘they went as they came’. This has already happened not in pictures of people moving around but in forces alignment. So if you get the sense of it, if you let go of the sense of form, you get the sense of it as trends of events or forces behind those trends being aligned and the huge pressure that is required to push because these are forces operating on millions of people sometimes or they may be cosmic evolutionary forces.

I will give one analogy, this is one of the most important things that Sri Aurobindo did for humanity which is so difficult to understand unless you see it in this way. The mass of humanity had, was barreling down, if would be the right phrase, barreling down to a kind of head-on collision and destruction. That was the direction of the whole evolutionary impulse of the mass of people. And as this barreling down to destruction is happening, Sri Aurobindo as if takes on the body of this force of an energy and direction and turns it by huge will and gives it an upward and positive direction. Now when that shift is made, it does not mean the whole of humanity will accept to follow, but the energy being fundamentally shifted that outcome is inevitable, but in between there are still many things which might happen which may delay or create destructions or harm to that outcome but the outcome is certain on that essential level.

From there as it moves down other planes, there are these possibilities of intervention, delay and so on. On those planes also one can act to reduce the harm, reduce the delay, reduce the destruction or pain or suffering of the shift. But the shift is inevitable and that's why in 1920 India's freedom was achieved. But going through all the lower gradations, there was still the danger of a fragmented freedom or a delayed freedom and the suffering it causes and the consequences of the suffering which has to be dealt with and those are on lower levels. At those levels also they can work, but at those levels there are other forces which are also pushing against and most importantly humanity allowing the help or refusing the help.

(0:38:04):

And this is why our participation makes all the difference. If at that point in the collective consciousness of India there was enough awakening and receptivity to this shift, to the force released, then the intermediate planes where these delays and divisions were being built up or were being put up would have been avoided and the action released from above finding a receptive base below, the veil, the gap thinned, the action would have been smooth, India would have become free by 1925, latest by 1930, without division, without all the suffering and all the delays which consequently have followed over the last 70 plus years. Could have been a very different outcome. But the blame you may put on the lack of readiness, lack of opening, lack of receptivity and so on. To which again you can blame the education or the collective culture, inertia and so on.

Which is why it is very difficult even when an action is initiated on the higher levels, it is very difficult to predict the timing and the specifics of form in which it will finally implement itself. Because at every level you have issues of receptivity and modifications. When people intervene on a level to give precise outcomes, that means already the outcome is very close to the physical, you perceive it there or you modify it there and things can be precisely done. But when an action is released or modified on that higher level, it has to go through all these, each representing a kind of a veil, a gap. If there were enough human beings who were open to that higher level in their consciousness and aligned to it, there would have been receptive points which would have allowed this shift to happen more smoothly.

So the same question actually, the same point can be seen in the context of the present evolutionary shift and the struggle of the forces of light and dark. By dark we mean those who oppose the light and resist the evolutionary awakening. Veils, in humanity, in the collective dullness, inertia, refusal to open, inability to open, lack of receptivity and so on, which make for the delays and the long periods of suffering. If you were, so this is just to give you an idea of how those worlds operate and how one can operate from those planes, which is possible if you go behind the veils, but in your consciousness you are able to go behind the veils. When you initiate an action from there, the receptive consciousness in other people also, if it could go behind the veils, the action would be smooth in outcome. But there are those veils and so there is translation, there is loss, there is delay. So I think this is one side of the story of the veils.

On a personal level, there are other veils also. I used Sri Aurobindo’s phrase of ‘veil of ego’, ‘veil of Nature’. Now both of these are veils which prevent you from becoming aware of the Self. Because you are so identified with your surface body-mind complex that would be a kind of a veil of Nature, separating this surface identification with the deeper, which is you. Or the ego knot itself becomes like a block, like a veil, preventing your outer narrow person from opening to the inner wider person. And so each plane, each grade can be described as if potentially a veil when there is a gap, when that grade is not awakened, when there is not enough consciousness developed.

(0:42:13):

Now I am going to again step back from this briefly and come back to this question. There is a very interesting description of Sri Aurobindo. I do not know if it was in the Record of Yoga. I think it was published separately; I think it's one of his letters where he is writing to somebody a symbolic form of the dream. And he says, I had this dream, of course it's not a dream, it is the Swapna Samadhi. He describes something and then he says, ‘and in this way I was shown the secret of Nature’. It's been a few years since I have read that but if I recall vaguely it's something like this: he sees as if a book pages and he sees a woman slipping in to the book between pages and then the book closing and then a little more but this is broadly the sense of. And then he says and so it was revealed, the secret of Nature was revealed to me. He doesn't explain and if you just read the dream you wonder what is this! And I did for a few years and then I believe I got a few hints which is what I am sharing now.

You see what Nature has done in evolution: Sri Aurobindo describes two ladders, the involutionary descending which forms planes; but there is no individualization in there in the sense that we have of a physical evolutionary individualization, there are forms in each plane, each world's beings etc. And in the downward movement all these planes are formed, losing completely into Matter, and then awakening through matter in consciousness as an evolutionary being. So in matter, the consciousness of all these planes is lost, covered up, but bound now in a single form. And so in that form, as these planes or these grades of consciousness push up, the form itself evolves substantially with the material of gross matter itself awakening to become Prana embedded in matter, then Mind embedded in matter and then subsequently higher grades, pulling matter, shaping matter, awakening to form the ascending ladder all the way up.

And here you will understand the layers of the pages, the sheets. At each level of the evolution, what did Nature do? She takes the possibilities of that level and unendingly plays with them, very slowly. Mother's comment is Nature enjoys going slowly, because she wants to have the full joy of each plane. And then a tiny shift, that's a new page and again building as if on that level a variety of forms and possibilities. Then a tiny shift, until she has built up a pretty complex series of form considering, let's say the last big one that we know being in the age of the dinosaurs and yes, there were human beings at that time. They were pretty much like us, perhaps not so individualised in mind as today but closer to thinking animals and yes, they battled the dinosaurs from which we have many of the legends of dragons and other beasts and giants. We also had very large human beings which were a different variation of the species, which were giants, some of them quite big from certain records which still survive, some of them being up to 18 feet and up to 30 feet. It's difficult to believe but these are realities which were present at that period. Just that the dinosaurs were gigantic and each dinosaur has its equivalent creature of a smaller size. As you see dolphins and the whales, they still have the giant surviving there.

So we have among the dinosaurs very large, for example, the I think it's the Brontosaurus long-necked, it's equivalent today might be perhaps a smaller long-necked creature but they're much smaller. So Nature was playing with very large sizes and then at some point she says okay, I've built all this enough not very useful to progress through these forms and she allows all these forms to lapse and pushes out a new burst, new forms of a new play of creation. But each one layering on the previous, and layering. The forms may not remain but consciousness is layering. Now, these layers you may look at symbolically. And this is the word that we would normally use as a metaphor to say that ‘ah, Nature is writing a book’.

It's much more than that. It's not a metaphor, it's a reality. She is laying out sheets of reality, of experience, building sheets literally. So, you can reduce it to a mental form of a metaphor as if of writing books and page turns, chapters form. Or you can see that is a literal description of Nature's way of working, building sheets of grades of consciousness and their possibilities, integrating them as closely as possible and then slipping potentialities, a seed here, for a future work to be done. And as you go further and here and here a few seeds are thrown and later many pages down, many sheets, layers of layers of consciousness later, those seeds now emerge as potentialities and now form.

An analogy would be or an example would be your eyes. In the level at which the prototype of the eyes are seen at a very early stage, they're so crude as to be almost indistinguishable from the highly developed refined eyesight or even the biological eye for the eyesight. But she has laid those foundations as seed forms, seed potentialities and they are rooted in the genetic structure. But she has a plan and later when the mind comes more into its own, still in the animal level, these seeds are sprouting, combining, joining to create the eyeball and the complex multi-layer structure of the eyes. And then you have a functional eye for which the roots were set way back. If you go back in the foetus development in the human womb and track all this, you will see the seed form of the eyeball generated at a certain stage out of practically nothing.

In evolution of those pages going back a few million years or a few billion years now, those seed forms were already placed long before, even before the possibility of the thinking mind with the conscious eyesight and a complex eyesight was even conceivable in those forms. So it's as if she's slipping between the pages certain things and somewhere along the way in the ascent is the level where this access to the psychic being is slipped. And that's in the heart centre at the grade of consciousness of the heart of the emotions before the full power of reason comes into its own. Somehow at that level she has created the closest point for the psychic influence to come forward.

Interesting!

(0:50:11):
And although it can come in the mind, she has chosen to make that. So she has as if slipped between the pages on that level, certain powers, certain potentiality, certain alignment, certain gateways now. This is the interesting thing. That's why again we are coming to the veils.

(0:50:27):

But now I'm going to look at the veils in two ways. Each layer is like a veil, separating as well as expressing. On each of these layers, there are potentialities of a deeper range, seeds farther within, not just superficially in the biology, but of grades of consciousness, powers of consciousness, which we will call the inner vital, inner mental which can come out but there are veils there, so to say vertical veils and gaps in those veils and Nature may work briefly to open certain gaps and allow certain potentialities to come and take form and then maybe the gaps close or they're left partly open to allow certain things. And so the centre of the chest which is an emotional centre as if she has left a kind of a gap which opens out to the psychic influence through the emotions but always mixed.

Similarly at this level of the formation of the mental consciousness in the body (points to the head region), she has left an opening to the inner mind and these openings become what we call chakras or they are focal points through which that energy can come, whirl and organise into the biology. So in a way as Nature is building these layers each of which you could see as veils or grids of consciousness, she is also in the inner opening opened gaps or created gaps or focal points through which things can stream through but those are half closed but they are there as gateways and the gates are veils. You can force the gate open, but like a veil it falls back; force it open, falls back.

So in many occult traditions, you recognize that you don't want to open these gates and allow all the junk from the inner worlds to come through because inner worlds may not always be higher spiritual worlds. So junk from the white line mental planes can come through all these chakras because they all open out into the universal possibilities of those planes. So they treat these wheels, gates carefully to consciously open them using certain methods and then close them afterwards, so that you're not left unbalanced; if you leave them open, all kinds of junk can come through; so closing them becomes as important. But now you see the sense of the veil is more interesting here. You are able to part the veil and bring it back.

And so you use the word gate which is more natural. It's the same idea. When you open, things come through but of what grade? They may be much finer. You have not yet developed the ability to enter those finer grades. And so there are veils of translation or reflection. Even when you open the gate, what comes through is often reflection of reflection of reflection, reduced to form and materiality or in the capacity in which you can receive; which makes for a huge difference between the descriptions of various occult traditions or their utility, their power, their effectivity, their forms and so on. But if you were to approach this whole thing spiritually, you would consciously, as you open through, become conscious of all these layers, diffusing, making transparent or removing all these veils until you know each level in its own terms, the way it experiences itself, not bound to matter. And that's when you have what I discussed as these experiences which are seen to be symbolic but actually are the reality, which to the material consciousness is as if reduced to symbolism.

And you can master all these. Or in the way of the Integral Yoga, you go all the way behind all the veils until you come to the veil of which separates you from the deepest reality of yourself, of your inmost being, your psychic being. And when these veils have been thinned out sufficiently or made more receptive or turned inward to receive, its influence can glow out more easily, flow out more easily, fill you more easily and as its influence fills from inside out, it shapes, it rearranges, reorganises. It can still initially reflect through the veils but it can also begin to part the veils, dissolve the veils.

So as a strategy, rather than going through a slow process of thinning veils layer by layer, which could take lifetimes, and mastering each layer by layer, the way Nature does in her bottom-up evolution, you take a very concentrated, narrow breakthrough to go as deep as you can and invite and allow that influence to come forward, filling, dissolving, opening, rearranging, shaping– because it is the natural master, the source of it all. And so the emergence of the psychic influence can rapidly achieve in the span of a few years perhaps the transparency and the organisation of the entire inner personality, which for you might take years or lifetimes from the outside-in process.

(0:56:04):

And therefore in the Integral Yoga, the great importance given to the opening, to the psychic influence and its growing presence in your personality, leading and shaping your personality all through. But a similar experience can be had in the vertical, which if you think of each layer successively above as being veils because undeveloped layers block, conceal, at best reflect from the higher. So as evolution has brought us to this organised mind, the ranges above the mind are blocked by all the undeveloped layers which is the lid that we spoke of earlier. But as these layers are undeveloped, what happens in them pretty much for you is unknown, but also unreceptive because not conscious, but still things influences can reflect through and eventually pop into your conscious part of the mind. But as they go through those layers, since there is no organised receptivity they are distorted, limited, narrowed down and then something pops in and you say, ‘ah, I'm so smart, I got this brilliant idea’!

But if you take trouble again to rise in consciousness, make aware each of these layers part by part; and again go very slowly, you will find you are able to receive the idea in its more essential character, hold it in its own higher grade and terms and then translate it into mental terms without losing the fullness of the idea.

Mother speaks of this in a different way. She says you can think with words which is perhaps the lowest grade of humanity and you actually see people unless they speak they can't think or in the act of thinking they have to speak and the two are almost identical. You see sometimes people walking on the street and talking to themselves. That's happening at that level. We are slightly more evolved from that. We are able to hold back the words while still enunciating in the mind verbally. And unfortunately a large part of our education trains us to bind in this level. It's very sad. Little children are taught, I hope someday we will have soon perhaps a discussion on education and training of children, but you are taught B-A-T bat, C-A-T, cat. Now this child, poor fellow, and there are many cases like this, the child continues into later age and still says that's a C-A-T, cat – but you taught him. Fortunately, in the normal evolution, they realise looking at adults, ‘no, that's not how you speak’, and they cut out the C-A-T and say cat.

But in the mind and in the physical part of the brain there's still a C-A-T before you say cat. Now when you start reading a book, your tongue is enunciating or you stop your tongue, your mind is enunciating at the speed at which you would read as if you are hearing it to yourself as you read. Which means you are again reducing to words and you are slowing down the reading speed. In fact what is being transmitted through the book is ideas through the words. And you do not receive at the level of ideas, you receive at the level of words.

So Mother says you can take it as a training to consciously think without words; you don't really quiet the enunciation of the tongue, you quiet the enunciation of the brain. And then, so at that point you are thinking, and then, that's pure thought actually; but still a thought is a thought form. There is a level above where you think with ideas behind the thoughts. An example would be the idea of freedom. And the moment this idea comes, it's like a seed idea out of which there are particularities of thought forms. What does freedom mean to you? And you will give to it a meaning. And for somebody it may be, I am free from jail coming out of a constriction, for somebody else it may mean the capacity to break around and do anything that you choose to do without any compulsion and so on; quite a few things, ways, many idea forms into which this more essential or the thought forms into which this more essential idea or concept exists. You can go into pure essentiality of idea, we may use the word concept.

If you master a concept you can articulate it in many ideas, each of which you can articulate in many thoughts, each of which you can articulate in many words or languages. But beyond that she says, even beyond an essentiality of concept, she says think with experience and at that point it's actually becoming an intuitive way of knowing, thinking. Without going through all these finer gradations, which seems very difficult and laborious even to develop, I have been in some of the last few sessions pointing to this in a different way by saying, learn to think without words and then be aware without thoughts. Automatically all these finer gradations or nuances of that upward ascent would be easily done.

The act of being aware without thoughts and then being able to turn that awareness into many forms of thoughts and rise out of thoughts into the more essential concepts or intention or experience behind, all this becomes easy in the silence of this thoughtless awareness and then wordless thought. And just there is the bridge also to the intuition. And the ability to experience and then move from experience to experience is what she is referring to when she says to think by experience. You are experiencing this, then that, then that, then that and it's a chain of experiences which you could translate into so many different forms of thoughts or words and so on. But these vertical veils also separating as you become conscious you can go through a very slow process of training or you can shoot as high as you can, hold that poise of thoughtless awareness and then as if reform from there integrating or allowing it, the higher influence, to integrate and build.

(1:02:58):

When you do it in this way you actually have a huge amplification of your intelligence. We have this wrong idea which comes from the physical science that intelligence is just your brain working more quickly or more rapidly in some way, using more of neurons, because all these ideas of computers as analogy come in the way.

In fact, Sri Aurobindo says, true intelligence comes from the opening to intuition and to the psychic within, because true knowledge comes from there naturally. The ability of the intuition to grasp, to penetrate, to perceive deeply, inside out, richly etc. is natural and that's what makes for the genius. So opening to intuition and allowing the intuition to fill your thinking mind but also consciously rising out of thinking mind to live more and more in this intermediate intuitivised mental state where you open to intuition but you're still operating in thought. That poise straightaway shoots your IQ by at least 20 points. It's not such a big deal. You can do this within a few weeks or months.

You can also glimpse there because it's open to the intuition without much difficulty then nature of the Higher Mind, where a thought can be massive including a whole range of aspects and ideas in a single glance, gaze or form of thought and so on. All this becomes very easy by this rapid rising and then from above turning with this higher grade to fill top down and organise. But each of these layers represents as if a veil, preventing you from opening to or receiving directly that, which is the Supermind, which now must go through many layers of reduction, reflection and so on until it comes into your thought. But in a sense, secretly, it is that which is the source of all your thoughts and each time you have the discovery of an idea or an insight, flash, insight awaking to something which was not created by you but discovered, it was actually a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of the Supermind.

You see for a supermind, being infinite, it has to reduce itself to finiteness. Then finiteness is like a ray. That's what we call intuition. That intuition itself is knowing directly in experience and identity which by reflection should reduce into mind. At that point there are two reductions already and now it has come into your mind. In your mind now it has to take form of idea or thought or words before you register it and say, ‘ah I've got it’; so multiple reductions. By rising above into this thoughtless awareness, you are able to receive directly in a higher, purer, more complete, comprehensive, formless or free of form or able to express in multiple forms, truth or experience. Layers bridged again.

(1:06:22):

So I am generalising this question to of veils and using the term veil in its most broad sense. I will now take it to three forms of the veil. One is the veil as it appears in, outside us; that's what I meant by the outer veil. And then as it appears within us in parts and then as it appears within us in terms of the psychic and the spiritual potential. But once you've got this overall sense of what happens within, you will find naturally the same thing can happen outside.

We are a very important, the most important vehicle in the universe because we represent the melding of all these planes of consciousness to which we have evolved so far. We are matter which is living, which is thinking and conscious, all in one continuum. And all these fine gradations which Nature has spent a few billion years building, developing, have been reasonably integrated except in our mental ranges there are still layers and powers and aspects not sufficiently developed. But that's part of Nature's current working. But it's available, that's the point, even if not fully integrated. And so within us, it's very easy to bridge all these layers.

But what's happening out there, outside you? You go to a forest or a beach or a mountain top or perhaps even in underwater. And as you're wandering around suddenly you come to a space where you feel there's something here, what is there? maybe at first you don't have words to describe, you feel it sometimes like a presence you feel it like a quality you feel its effect on you, which is how you know that there is something there. The effect on you is the layer within, which you are receptive and that gives you a hint of the layer of the thing which is there. But maybe you are receptive in a narrow band and the thing is of a larger band. So we give it a name, we say, ah, there is a presence. If you are not conscious, you will just say, ah, this place feels so peaceful. Or I feel so happy when I come here. And your mind quickly fills in by saying because of the scenery perhaps and you say I like to be in this place because I feel happy and content. Why? Perhaps I think it's because of the greenery of the trees or because it is so barren and I can look far away your mind fills it. It has nothing to do with any of that. It is the presence.

You can go to certain beaches– empty, you go to other beaches –empty. You go to other beaches and say, wow, what a presence; and automatically people will congregate to those spaces because they feel the effect. It's as if it calls them or they feel attracted to it. It is this which makes for certain places on earth that become famous or people accumulate and so on. Even centres of power, centres of finance, centres of art, centres of beauty, centres of culture, refinement, strength and various other powers of the divine at different places. Even not all mountains or mountaintops are the same. There are certain mountains you can climb, go on the top, see yes it's nice, it felt good, I achieved something, you come down. You go to another mountain, maybe same height or even lesser, you go there and you feel this shift, this uplift and you'll find people going there more and more.

Everest as such is pretty empty mountain. It's only attractive because you are told it's the highest. But Mount Kailash, which technically may not be as high as Everest, has a presence and so people are attracted to the presence, whether they are conscious or not. So in this way you realise certain mountains have a personality, have a quality of consciousness. But what happens with those spaces where there is a presence, is the presence is bridging the gap of the veils. It straddles many layers and comes close enough to the material that you register it immediately.

And so that space becomes a space where we will say, the veil has thinned; the deeper or the higher or that certain aspect or power is close enough to be felt almost materially– thinning of veils. Going there, suddenly things of the spiritual become easy, they become accessible, your thoughts get lifted up and you cannot somehow think of things which are more coarse. You cannot even do things, you don't feel like. And because we are creatures of our feelings and impulses and instincts, we automatically behave in a better way; you don't realise why.

You come to a different place which is so dulling, you find yourself sucked into this degrading vibration and you find yourself behaving in a degrading way. If you live there long enough from childhood, you will say, ah this is my character. You shift, migrate to this place which is of a very different kind, you will find your entire behaviour shifts, but if your character is reasonably sticky, you will tend to bring those characteristics and there will be a struggle. In the struggle either the higher wins and you feel yourself lifted for the while that you're there, you go back and fall back into your old patterns or you find yourself suffocating in the struggle and say, I can't stay in this place long enough, I don't gel with it, I need to go back to my whatever was that lower grade. Interesting!

(1:12:26):

So people accumulate by type, by grade, by quality of aspiration or vibration or capacity or skill or aspect of consciousness, which is more developed into areas which correspond to those vibrations and happens something even more interesting as they accumulate they tend to amplify by their addition that quality or they can begin to sway it or dilute it or even lose it, if that is the trend of the collective. Because we are also creating a vibe, we are also creating or thinning veils or opening or shifting the opening the grade at which the veil opens by our participation. And so in a way on physical earth there are so many areas which represent different qualities of consciousness and humanity accumulates around it, takes birth there, sometimes we go through many lives to develop certain qualities in those spaces where it is most conducive because the veil is thinner for that quality or consciousness. Interesting!

But also in the process we are shifting or opening the earth itself to higher possibilities by amplifying what was given as a starting point by the thinning of the veil. And this is what makes for so many places of pilgrimage or natural centers of spiritual or occult qualities of consciousness, including healing. So there may be a space where there is a strong quality of a certain healing energy, people go there now and then more and more people come with the faith and the conviction which adds and amplifies the quality of energy there and so on. This is to do with veils in spaces.

Now remember, since you are the bridge linking all these levels, if you have a sufficient opening to the inner and higher just by an aspiration, prayer or call, you could go to a place where the veil is thick and invoking by prayer, by call, by aspiration, create as if a thin passage of opening where there is a thinning of the veil and the higher, inner etc. begins to bridge more with the outer and a space of sanctity is created, a spiritual vibration in which the veil thins. You go to someone's house and you say, ah this feels so sacred or the reverse. But equally it can widen out to a small community or it could widen out all the way to humanity.

And we have had ages in which the veil was thinner for mass of humanity and on Nature naturally, even the animals would feel it and then ages during which the veils as if shut, closed, thickened and everything become more and more material. Animals are more sensitive than you to these influences. They also move away from the humans because of their dulling, thickening influence. It affects everything, even the trees lose something of their higher access and dull as if in their ability to hold or receive. And those are the ages of darkness we may say or patches or cultures or civilizations or areas where there's darkness, in which there may still be individuals who hold the light and hold a thin opening for the higher to come through the veil. But it could again become an awakening all over the world.

(1:16:04):
So this is as far as veils externally are concerned. You can create a thinning of the veil or an opening to the inner and higher in location for a duration of time or even for a larger, smaller or larger space. Because you are the bridge and this is why we have the consecration of temples by people who are more evolved spiritually ideally to do that – they create a bridge. Or you use occult means which was the for which were the formulas of these rituals given for invocation for opening for sanctifying, basically creating a temporary thinning of a veil for something higher to bridge with the lower, for something inner to bridge with the surface. It can be done in an object and that is what we call consecrated prasad in which now a spiritual force is as if held and in ingesting it you are also ingesting an influence where the veil is thinned into your body and you feel good or it can have any healing effect because now an inner or higher power is able to act on your biology. This was the sense of the prasad.

There was a period in the ashram's history when Mother was constructing this bridge with the overmental worlds, where she was linking certain sadhakas to these overmental gods. And of course she did not need to do much she would place her hand and that's the bridge and infuse directly that energy, that quality, that consciousness and meld it into your consciousness. But one of the things she did which is fascinating for its value in this way because we're talking about the food and prasad. This was in the soups, this was called the soup ceremony. I have heard one of the disciples, maybe two, who were present during the soup ceremony. It stopped I think 1928 or 29. And then we have secondary descriptions of the soup ceremony of people who heard from those disciples.

But they describe it this way that there was such a charge of atmosphere, such a presence and intensity. They would all be waiting in this room which is presently the reception hall. As you enter the ashram main gate, you go straight through. Now those gates are closed. Mother never wanted them to be closed. She specifically asked those gates to be opened but they've been closing it the last few years. That's the hall and there would be a bench there. A large pot of soup was placed with several bowls. The disciples would be waiting. Mother would come down. At that time I think, I don't know if she was still living upstairs just above. So that's 1926 I think where they changed and then they shifted to the other part of the ashram. But till then, post 1926 Mother would come down, Sri Aurobindo would be up. She would come in this intense concentration.

It's also a period when interestingly just before 1926, she would wear a veil in front of her face and it was to reduce the intensity of the power that would hit people otherwise, overwhelm people. So even that veil was needed to allow something to go through but to dim its intensity to make it bearable. And she comes in that full concentration, she would stand before the soup, hold her hands above the soup, pouring down the consciousness. Now straight away she is forming a bridge between the highest levels and this most material substance. She would take a scoop of the soup into a bowl, concentrate on the bowl. Now for each disciple it was a different deity though. She would concentrate on the bowl, herself take a sip, embodying that deity and then give it to the sadhak who would drink it. And in this way, the transmission was made and the fixing of the consciousness.

These people were, what can I say, it may sound a bit crude to say, but we are like monkeys opening to the supramental consciousness. And it was her skill, her power, her capacity by which she made the bridge and lifted the consciousness, opened these vessels to something so much greater that even they would not be able to bear in its intensity, and she was lifting them, shaping them, widening them to make them vehicles for this overmental consciousness, not supramental, the world of the gods, over mental worlds, which is infinity but with an aspect now being connected to a consciousness which who could never have even imagined or dreamt of these experiences, unable to contain even and she is working on them to build and shape. What an extraordinary capacity!

In the history of humanity, we have not had such an extraordinary capacity to just plug in literally the highest ranges of consciousness down into a human vessel. Of course there were certain minimal conditions but the requirement was so minimal compared to what people already were, the requirement was minimal because we are literally thinking animals, thinking apes. And from there with an aspiration perhaps and everything else is being built by her, all these gradations in between, bridged in her own consciousness and then infused and transferred into another. What an extraordinary capacity!

You don't know of anybody in the spiritual history of humanity who has been able to do this with such precision and skill on all the aspects of the different powers of the Divine. Each of the gods is an entire world in itself of infinity and as with the same ease, she embodies them and transfers them into a person, in each one differently, separately and this whole group is being as if linked to something extraordinary and that's how she was building this bridge from the overmental worlds to the physical using the sadhakas as a vehicle.

(1:22:47):

Now remember they are not embodying the overmental gods directly. There is a reduction, a huge reduction. But still, that would provide this physical supporting base around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, which would be an intermediate of the slope to humanity. So that the full embodiment in Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's body could be sustained without creating too hard a gap or too overwhelming an effect on the mass of humanity which is largely unreceptive. So creating this gradient of support, a collective vessel so to say, which can allow for this massive shift of the Supramental consciousness in Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's body to be bourn by an intermediate layering of the overmental consciousness in these people. Had they continued, they would have completed that.

And I have discussed this before, why it had to be stopped. And a decision was made by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that this would lead to certain results which would delay the full Supramental manifestation because the gods themselves would become intermediaries and would not want that shift. So Mother decides to dissolve it, she goes back to her room, concentrates and in two hours she dissolves what she had built over two years. Again, what an incredible capacity, what an incredible power to manifest or to dissolve. And I said this before recently, I think we had an interview with one of these men who was a vehicle for the one of the gods and he said, “I was becoming so powerful, the Mother was jealous and she started to withdrew the power from me”. Okay that's the level of stupidity and like I said, human apes!

But there were others. Even after she withdrew, the imprint of those gods remained and Mother comments about this: you see X, you see Y, they still have the imprint of that deity and so on. But there were others who were unable to contain, they were struggling to contain and so on. All this is to show you what is possible from a single individual what you have bridged within you, you can open the veil into a space. Now even you don't need to have bridged it, you need to have only aspiration to invoke and from above the divine consciousness can bridge to the point of your receptivity and open in the space. This is the power of the prayer. Or indirectly through the ritual, that's what you're doing by the concentration in the form of the ritual. But you could discard all the elements of the ritual and simply open with a wide open pure aspiration and invoke and there is the presence. How long it stays?-- depends on your capacity to contain. How intense?-- depends on your capacity to hold the intensity. How wide?-- depends on your capacity in a way to space and the purity and the receptivity in that space.

So finally, you are the link. Even if it is outside your capacity of consciousness, you can invoke by prayer a higher grade which can still come and fill. But you may not be able to hold or receive in full density or intensity. And that's why you have to develop your capacity as a vessel, as a receptacle to be able to be wide and hold in intensity and fullness and depth. So this is describing the nature of let's say automatic veils on earth which are aspects of the earth consciousness opening to the divine and possibilities and layers and then beings coming and filling spaces and building their own, so to say, domain of influence. And the human possibility to do all this far more skillfully, consciously, widely, this is outside us.

So, thinning of the veil outside. I would suggest your own home at least should be a space where you can create a thinning of the veil or at least a prayer space in your home. Again I understand that not all of us can maintain the home with the same sanctity. But if you can't, a space, even a time in a space when you sit to concentrate. Many ways, but try to create some space within your house where this veil is thinned and it's not difficult.

So I've been to a house of a friend. They had, because of practical reasons, all the rooms on one side for their living. And there was one room at the entrance which was at the other end of the house. That became their prayer room. You could enter there and the presence was felt. It was so distinct. And then one of the elder father in the house was ill. He was the one who was praying there every day, by the way, and the presence was building. So he was ill and for a few years it was difficult for him to go. He went less and less. At one point he stopped. And I noticed, I came into the house, I went to the prayer room as a routine. When I visited them, I would first go because the presence was so good. And I felt the presence thinned out, interestingly. So then I suggested to the lady in the house to spend time and do the prayer to maintain it. And for him I suggested if it's possible, even though it's difficult, get him to go there. It will be good for his rejuvenation and his health and of course for the inner life.

Later they shifted house. They went to another house where, the prayer room was in the center of the house and all the rooms were around as if that's the way it had been designed by the previous owners. And I said this is far better because now the radiance spreads all over the house. It's interesting to see in different families also how it works. There are families I've seen where there's a prayer room at the entrance or somewhere where the priest comes, does his thing and goes away and he leaves prasad which is distributed. Nobody even bothers to go there or to participate in the priest’s puja. So, there is a presence perhaps maintained but it does not have its effect on the house. You could still enter the room and feel differently but the house does not benefit. But if the family participated, that could become a focal point for the influence to spread into the whole house.

So this is just to give you an idea of what is possible and what you can do and then it is for each one to choose.

(1:29:37):

Now this now we extend to our own body which is our house. There are parts in us where the veil is thick, there are parts where it is thin. Notice, observe. Remember every grade of consciousness is a veil. So there are veils separating your mind from your physical body which is often thinnest in the hands and in the face.

In your hand you are able to feel, especially if you have trained your hands for skill, playing a musical instrument or do any skillful work, even writing, even typing. If you have infused mind awareness into the fingers to develop the skill and consciousness, the veil is thinner here. As you go down, this part, let's say the forearms here particularly front may be more conscious, back is less conscious; even back of the hand is less conscious comparatively. It gets less and less conscious at shoulders. And for most people just below the chest before the abdomen there's a huge gap here. Go to the back- there's a huge gap from shoulders all the way down to hips. Thick veil. Side– relatively less, front is least, generally speaking. Even in your personal space, in your aura you'll find this part in front you're more conscious. As you go down into the legs again it tends to thin out unless you've done sports involving skill of the feet then that part is more conscious.

Now when there is a spiritual influence, the parts which are more conscious naturally have greater receptivity. Your hands, your face even typically. Back of the head, no. Interestingly this back of the head, the brain here is related to the subconscious, and so on. Now all this is to say that for a Yoga which aims at a transformation of your entire nature, you have to consciously thin out all the veils in your body, physical body, and then in your life force and then in your mind. And each of these levels, as you thin out the veil, you will also find opens inward to its equivalent subliminal and universal consciousness. When you go into dream state, which level you go into and your ability to shift between those levels in dream state is actually built by making conscious here.

So your physical body and the physical bound consciousness is an extraordinary gift to train all your inner and higher abilities by integrating them here. The more you integrate here, the more the inner and higher ranges get integrated because this is the point of binding in form. That's why the enormous value of your physical body,-- it's the point on which all the powers, all the grades of consciousness are compelled to be bound into a single point and merge into each other so to say and therefore form bridges easily. It's an amazing thing when you think about it. And so to discard the body and its training is to lose a huge opportunity. And in the ascetic traditions where you discard the body consciousness and just go to the inner, what you have struggled to attain there could have been easily done or more easily done by doing it here on the surface part and then from there opening to the inner.

So in a person in whom there has been integration, let's say through sports, of the mind awareness and the emotional life force. You're playing basketball, you get upset, you get tense, you have anticipations, you have disappointments and all integrated with the mind for the full focus on the body while playing basketball. Such a person in real life will have better mastery of emotions than anybody else who has not done that work. And that better mastery of emotions in your dream state will mean you are able to shift through levels of emotions, shape them, direct them or change the circumstances of that symbolic world of dream and compel a different outcome because you have this mastery of emotions, by playing basketball! Seems trivial but actually is a great power if done with that intention.

Of course you can play basketball unconsciously. You have missed an opportunity. You do it consciously- you have developed self-mastery on all these levels; you have integrated all these levels, thinned out the veils and opened to the inner and higher possibilities where also the veils have become now better thinned or integrated across planes.

(1:34:23):

Your physical body is your single greatest gift for the spiritual development that seeks a transformation and integration and a mastery. Okay, so within you make your entire physical body as conscious as possible. One of the best ways is the full spectrum of asanas. Now we can't do all asanas but notice how the asanas are targeted to different parts and sometimes multiple parts and sometimes multiple alignments. There are asanas for example, twisting asanas, where literally the twist sensation goes from one arm down across all the way to the opposite leg all the way to the toe, if done correctly. Different lines, different passages of energy flows being integrated, loosened up and awakened to consciousness and receptivity. If done with that intention and if into that you bring a higher aspiration and link it all the way into the body, it's an incredible work for transformation of the body.

When those streams, those channels have been formed, the higher force coming through just flows and fills and goes all the way to the most material part of the consciousness, eventually into the cells. If that is not done, the higher force may still cut its channels but it's a top-down approach, although more rapidly, without the receptive base necessarily. If the receptive base of awakening of mental consciousness is there, very quickly the two join and then the higher can work so much faster.

So this is the second part of the thinning of veils in the body consciousness by blending, merging, creating continuities across all these levels, mentalizing the body as thoroughly as possible, as deeply as possible, including the subconscious workings of digestion etc. It's possible, just by willing, just by following– as you swallow the food, feel, feel, feel, until it fades out; hold that point and put your will to extend awareness. And there's a point where you will feel the sphincter of the stomach and you can make it conscious. And by training you can actually consciously open and loosen. And all the way down. May be too much to do but just hold the intention at least. This is just to show you the scope of what's possible.

And Hatha Yogis routinely do that, the more advanced ones. They are able to literally swallow a piece of food, take it all the way to the stomach or bring it back up or feel it as it goes through the intestines and the moment you can feel, you can control, you can influence and so on and then all the way eventually, at least in intention that it should go all the way into the cells into the tissue fuse into it. So this would be the second aspect of the thinning of the veils. The first was outside you, the second is inside you, particularly in the body and mentalizing and turning inward or upward with aspiration.

(1:37:18):

And then the third veil, which is the single most important for us now, is the veil that separates the inmost psychic being, your soul, from the rest of your personality. And you could say similarly the opening above, which is the lid in Sri Aurobindo's vocabulary, but take it as just a thick hard veil for our purpose now. All of yoga can be reduced to the opening of these two. But the inward veil is so thick, the moment you turn in, you find a blank, you find a darkness, there's nothing. But you have to learn to go deeper and deeper with awareness, with focus on your deepest aspiration. One of the easiest ways is to use the reference of concentration on the Mother or the part in you that loves Her or feels devotion and gratitude and just plunge deeper into that. Not stick in the emotions which binds you in the surface; go behind emotions to the source of it.

And you'll find increasingly as you go within there's a familiarity, there's a bridge which forms the thinning of the veil of that influence and as that influence comes forward more and more, the veil thinned only in that link, it then spreads inside and its influence awakes, organises and eventually rends the veil, tears the veil in a way that is permanent. Not opening, closing, not just thinning, all those are preparatory stages. Eventually the thinning out, the opening, eventually it is torn for good. And a similar operation in the upward opening. We have discussed these in great detail before in previous talks, I don't go into it, but this would be the sense of the ultimate veil, which is separating the soul from the rest of the surface personality or the self above and the higher powers of consciousness from our mental, physical, mentalized physical body.

To the variation of the question: Is it possible then to look into these worlds?

Yes, if you bridge the veil enough.

Can it be done by technology?

By occult means you can fill substance that gives you a glimpse, but your receptive side is too narrowly bound in form to be able to correctly appreciate or register. The reduction in form of an experience which is beyond form, of a knowledge which is in a thoughtless awareness, to reduce it to words is always a loss and always a reduction and can be done in many ways. So each person might perceive the same thing differently because reduced to your familiar language and words, isn't it? So for example, you infuse the experience of freedom. In one person he speaks the word freedom in English, the other person uses the word liberty. And you will say, oh, but this is different from that. At the level of words and sounds, it's different. Similarly, at the level of ideas less difference, but at the level of experience it would be one. So any perception of deeper and higher realities by even mechanical or occult means would involve the reduction of symbolism and a loss therefore and would be open to interpretation.

This is the problem which happens for people who have visions without the shift of the inner opening or higher opening of consciousness. You see pictures. Let's say, I saw a peacock flying from left to right and then I saw a ray of light which came and then I saw this colour and then a cloud. What does it mean? I don't know. Because all you did was reduce in the representation of symbolic form an experience which is of a deeper kind. This is what happens with dreams. By the time we remember in the surface part, we have lost the meaning which we knew in that state. And the training will allow you to feel the vibe or the sense of it and go behind the form to the essential experience quality and there you know exactly what it is. And this is the training for bridging the veil.

So yes, you can create means, devices and need not be physical devices, they can be occult devices to glimpse into things but it's of very little value if your consciousness has not developed to open to there, because all you will do is reduce to symbolism which will make no sense. So for example, you receive by intuition and it comes in words in an unknown language. To you it is unintelligible unless you know the language. So the same when you reduce to forms, it's reduced and unless you know the meaning of the forms for that case, it means nothing to you and so on.

So I think I've covered the three questions also but widened the topic to generally deal with this whole question of veils, both outer and inner and intermediate veils. It's a fascinating field. The bridging of veils, the opening of veils and the complete removal of all veils, including all the final veils of ignorance itself, is the ultimate goal of the sadhana of the Integral Yoga in which we live in a consciousness freed of all veils, able to experience reality without the veils, or if veils are held, they are held only provisionally for part of the play, when in fact you are already conscious of what is behind the veils as you are conscious of the veil itself. So in a sense you live in a consciousness freed of veils and ignorance, including the full veil of ignorance, but you can play with the veils and forms as a liberated play of the divine Satchitananda here in the world, in matter and with your body in which now this bridging has taken place literally as substance of Satchitananda in its transformed state. Freed of veils, now using veils as means of creating forms for purpose of play only.

I think thats a beautiful vision and aspiration to hold for us.

I think there are no particular questions regarding this; I think we can pause here. We'll take a moment to hold this aspiration for the unveiling of the divine Presence within us and the thinning and eventually removal of the lid that opens us to the higher ranges and our experiences and participation in the world freed of veils, playing with veils although.

(1:44:30):
Namaste.

[Alina] Namaste and thank you for such an inspiring talk today. Thank you.

[Sraddhalu] Thank you.